A document management system must be able to manage documents stored in repositories located remotely, where the repositories are accessed through computer networks. In accessing documents, time delays are important. First there is a time delay for an inquiry message to propagate from a user's workstation over the network to the repository, then a document acquisition at the repository requires time, and finally transmission of the documents located by the inquiry back over the network to the user's workstation requires time.
When a search is conducted in a repository, typically search criteria are specified, and typically a number of documents are located where the documents satisfy the search criteria. Typically, the contents of documents found by the inquiry are returned to the user by transmission over the network. In the event that several hundred documents are located during the search, then the time to transmit the documents to the user becomes prohibitive.
Various solutions to remote acquisition of documents from a user's workstation have been proposed. Typically, the solution involves producing a list of the documents, and then for the user to request desired documents based upon information in the list. Further, typical solutions permit the user to acquire, by transmission over the network, single pages of a document for the purpose of reading the page. After reading one page the user requests the next page, and so the user must wait while the next page is located in the repository and transmitted over the network to the user's workstation. For example electronic mail systems typically give the user a list of unread mail, and the user then chooses to read one document at a time from the list.
Commercial database acquisition systems employing the above document retrieval strategies include the Dialog system (Dialog is a trademark of Information Services, Inc., Palo Alto, Calif.), the LEXIS-NEXIS system (Lexis and Nexis are trademarks of Mead Data Central, Inc., Dayton, Ohio), and the Westlaw system (Westlaw is a trademark of the West Publishing Company, St. Paul, Minn.).
Typically, the user cannot execute a new command until the user has finished with the results of his/her latest search. That is, the user's workstation is "busy" until the latest search is completely dealt with, and the search process terminated.
There is needed a document management system capable of conveniently managing retrieval of hundreds of documents, and minimizing the busy intervals of the user's workstation during which the workstation is not receptive to receiving new commands from the user.